Race report: Army Run 2025

Race information

Name: Army Run (opens in new tab)
Date: September 21, 2025
Distance: half marathon
Location: Ottawa, ON
Time: 1:32:36 (chip); 1:32:12 (watch)

I was a fairly active kid; in grade school I played soccer and badminton (both poorly) and ran cross country and track. I never thought seriously about distance running since my strengths clearly lay in the shorter-track stuff: your 100 and 200 and 400 metres and so on. Anything over 5k felt torturously difficult and I don’t think I ever managed more than 8k in the first 30 years on earth.

After high school I stopped running consistently, mostly due to competing academic time commitments and my general unwillingness to spend more time outside in unpleasant Canadian winters than necessary. I was always still fairly healthy — sure, I ate too many chips, but I counterbalanced that by walking 10,000 steps per day, right? — but eventually I came to realize that I hadn’t been raising my heart rate above, say, 140 bpm more than a few times a year.

That changed in late 2023 when I started spin biking. This was brutal at first; I’d never been much of a biker so I hadn’t developed much leg strength, and my aerobic base had completely atrophied. But I eventually restored it to the point where my heart rate didn’t spike worryingly whenever I exerted myself. I settled into a routine where I’d spin for 3 to 4 hours per week, treating it as a high-intensity interval workout.

In mid-2024, I also started walking more frequently, mostly to stimulate deep thinking. I started with 30 minutes every lunch hour, then I added a half-hour in the mornings before work too, then extended that morning walk to an hour. Before I knew it, I was walking 12k to 15k every day without fail. Then later that year, something persuaded me to try running. I can’t recall what prompted it — maybe it was finding a pair of deeply discounted Saucony Kinvara shoes, a model I’d quite liked when they were first released, at a local store. Or maybe it was the fact that I was already taking a huge number of steps every day and could save time by doing them more quickly.

So I found myself running again. Not enough to displace spin, and not enough to gain any major adaptions from it; just enough to feel miserable a couple times a week. And when the weather improved in March 2025, I decided that I’d try to imnprove my fitness and run more seriously. Now I was running 3, maybe 4 times a week. I even made it up to 18k, surely an impossibly large distance to my high school self. I spent a quarter of the run at over 80% of my max heart rate, but I finished it!

Unfortunately I also ended up overdoing things. I didn’t plan my nutrition well enough — probably insufficient carbs — and ended up bonking pretty much every time I went out. Eventually I just gave up.

Training

After my poor experience in the spring, I took a bit of time off, then resolved to get back into running and hopefully shed the errant pounds that I’d put on while on break. Impulsively deciding that I needed an extrinsic motivatator, on June 8 I signed up for the Army Run half marathon. I had only 15 weeks to prepare, and while I’d experimented with base-building in the spring, I knew things would have to change if I were to pursue this goal seriously. So I bought a copy of Pfitzinger’s Faster Road Running and boldly committed to a 12/63 Pfitz plan. 12/63 builds to just over 100km a week across a 12-week period, which left me with three weeks to get my mileage up to pre-plan levels. Pfitz recommends doing so over ten weeks, and all while starting with a 60km base. I had neither. In retrospect, my decision was very foolish — I should have bought the book two months earlier, and I shouldn’t have ramped up my mileage so quickly due to the serious risk of injury — and impractical. The 12/47 plan would have been more realistic to start, as I ended up adjusting Pfitz’s plan anyway. But there are many ways to learn, including through failure, and learn I did.

And so I began the training plan. The Ottawa summer was incredibly hot with many 40+ degree days. Running in these conditions was brutal, so I began waking up earlier and trying to get out of the house by 5:30am at the absolute latest. This offered some respite, albeit at the expense of my sleep schedule. I found myself cutting some of Pfitz’s longer runs short nonetheless.

I tried a few different shoes during my training. I bought the much-memed Novablast 5 for easy runs, and then discovered that, while comfortable, they were also extremely clunky — like running with bricks strapped to my feet. My years of the minimal-drop, extremely lightweight Kinvaras had clearly spoiled me. I had more luck with the Adidas EVO SL and the Boston 13. I’d swap between pairs of EVO SL for easy, long, and tempo runs, while the Boston 13 would be reserved for speed work. For race day I debated between the Alphafly 3 and the Adios Pro 4. I eventually chose the latter for their similarity to my existing rotation; the comfort and bounce of the EVO SL with the energy return of the Boston 13.

I tracked my runs with an Apple Watch using the stock Workouts app. After runs I’d glance at my results in HealthFit (opens in new tab) and export them to intervals.icu (opens in new tab) for further analysis. The data showed that while my overall fitness was increasing, the slope wasn’t aggressive enough for me to see much of an improvement.

The mileage increase definitely felt steep though. I found myself experiencing all kinds of new aches and pains, including some left knee pain that put me out of commission for close to a week and that prompted a PT visit. Turns out it was nothing serious — just the usual lack of glute strength — but it wasted valuable time and increased my skepticism about the possibility of finishing the half marathon at all. Plus I still had to continue building aerobic capacity and speed. Things seemed dire.

In late June I decided that things weren’t quite working, so I started freestyling. On Pfitz rest days or long run days I’d do higher-intensity spin sessions, sometimes supplemented with a shorter run. This meant that I never got a day off, but it helped me ramp up the exercise minutes without running my body into the ground. Looking back I’m not sure if this was the absolute best strategy — I’ll say more about this later on — but it got me doing low-impact subthreshold workouts when I might not otherwise have bothered.

One downside of this approach was speed endurance. I realized I could run decent distances, but not long ones, and definitely not long ones at a competitive pace. By this point I’d reached three or four interval sessions on the spin bike every week, but never more than five runs. This wasn’t helping me get any faster, but my problem was that I absolutely hated the V̇O₂ max runs in Pfitz’s schedule. Running full steam is never fun, but as I didn’t have a track handy, I had to settle for the multi-use pathway that skirts the city’s main canal, which I really dislliked for such efforts.¹ It’s fairly flat and there aren’t any stop lights or traffic dangers, but the surface is sometimes ridged and knobby, and I was wary of turning an ankle. Plus there were always walkers and bikers to dodge. So for a couple days after each V̇O₂ max effort, I’d discover new aches and pains that became particularly annoying to manage.

I also had to contend with the 21.1 kilometres of the half-marathon itself. Pfitz’s endurance and progression runs extend to 26km, but this seemed unreachable to me at the time. So I adjusted things yet again, satisfying myself with some sub-2-hour easy runs at half-marathon distance. While it didn’t adhere to the letter of Pfitz’s recommendation, I figured that hitting 2 hours on an easy run would build significant confidence. In my first such effort, run on August 9, I ended up posting a comfortable 1:58 with a pretty significant negative split. I resolved to do this a few more times, cracking 1:56 the next Saturday, then 1:53 the Saturday after that, and then 1:42 the following week. I put more effort and a couple Maurten gels into that last one, but there was definitely gas left in the tank. By this point I was runnning every day and clearing 85 kilometres weekly. Sub-1:40 felt within reach; the only question was by how much.

So I set myself a race-day goal of 1:37:30 , worked out the negative-split paces required to get there, and hoped for the best. The plan was to take the first kilometres easy at around 5:00 /km, just to see how I felt, then make a decision about how quickly to jump to a faster pace (4:50 /km if I was feeling stiff, 4:40 /km otherwise) for the rest of the 5k. Part of the thinking here was motivated by concern about getting stuck behind slower runners; I really didn’t want to deal with the in-race anxiety of exceeding my budgeted time right at the start of the race. The other rationale was my strong desire to negative split. I’d been taught to aim for a light negative split in my cross country days, and I’d read far too many Reddit horror stories about bonking near the end — since I wasn’t sure how much I’d have in the tank, never having raced the distance before, this felt important to me. Plus I was banking on the psychological upside of passing folks in the latter half of the race. I’d learned that negative splits are a risky strategy; r/advancedrunning doesn’t love them (opens in new tab), for instance, but I’d already done so many progression runs that I didn’t want to change my training strategy so late in the game.

About six weeks before the race, I discovered the Norwegian singles training approach from the now-famous LetsRun thread (opens in new tab). Subthreshold training seemed valuable given my poor experience with V̇O₂ max, so I decided to give the technique a shot in its stead. In retrospect, I probably adjusted my regimen too late to see major adaptations. But it served several useful psychological function; I no longer felt like my body was falling apart, I broke my old pre-training-block 10k record during a “1km subthreshold, 60 second jog” workout of all things, and I started to feel fast.²

I kept this approach up for some weeks, then tapered in the final week, skipping spin and progressively decreasing mileage until my ACWR (opens in new tab) was comfortably below 0.8 and intervals.icu put me in the “fresh” zone. I eschewed Pfitz’s day-before recovery run and decided to take a couple longer walks instead. The night before the race, I ate a bit more bread than usual, then went to bed at about 9pm.

Race day

Pre-race

I woke up just before 5am and had espresso and some blackberries. I typically don’t eat much in the mornings so this was par for the course. I did some chores around the house and browsed the usual websites for a while. Then I shook out the legs a bit, activated the glutes, put on the race outfit, stuffed three Maurten Gel 100 and my phone into my pockets, and got ready to leave. The attire for the day was mostly Soar — dart cap, tech tee, and socks — with Janji trail tights and the Adios Pro 4. It was a chilly morning, but I knew that it would warm up so I didn’t bother to wear anything else.

The race was set to begin at 9:30am . Fortunately I live close to the starting line at the Ottawa City Hall, so I left at about 9am and arrived early enough to take in the 10k leaving the corrals just before my start time. The area was jam-packed with runners doing warm-ups and fans and live music. Entirely too much of a scene for me on a Sunday morning.

Race

My fears of getting slowed down at the start didn’t materialize as I ended up pretty close to the line. As a result, my opening pace was a bit brisker than I’d anticipated; I had no trouble locking in the first couple kilometres at around 4:50 /km. Things felt good; my heart rate was a bit more elevated than usual for the pace, but I figured that was mostly situational adrenaline. Otherwise, the first bits of the race were uneventful as we ran through downtown Ottawa and up Sussex toward Rideau Hall. The most noteworthy thing was the bizarre sensation of running with a group. I train exclusively solo, so I found it strange to have to weave around and dodge individuals, to speed up abruptly to pass rows of runners, to hear extended conversations among friends running as a team, and the like. But this wasn’t a bad thing, as I’ll explain shortly, just different.

At the 5k mark I took a gel and decided to quicken the pace considerably. I didn’t drink anything at the station. As a rule, I never drink while running since fluids tend to slosh around in my stomach — a most unpleasant sensation.³ This played out fine for me, as I was able to pass lots of folks who slowed down to drink, freeing up more open road to myself. The next five kilometres took us through the Beechwood Cemetery and adjoining neighbourhoods. Lots of families came out of their homes to cheer the runners on, which I’d never experienced before but appreciated. The cemetery portion followed a hilly path but nothing my legs couldn’t handle. I noticed I was starting to pass more and more individuals, but that nobody was passing me. I figured this had to be a good thing; as long as I didn’t bonk near the end then the negative split was working. The friendly competition also boosted my morale, giving me a distraction from questions of pace by offering more tangible short-term objectives to achieve.

As I approached the halfway point, I felt good enough to kick things into high gear. I took another gel just shy of the 10k marker, then turned on the jets and shot for 4-minute kilometres onward. This was a bit more aggressive than I’d originally planned. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or the taper, or the cumulative outcome of my training; whatever the reason, I felt strong enough to handle it. So off I went down the Sir George-Etienne Cartier Parkway and back.

It’s hard to overstate the psychological benefit of passing people on the back stretch of a race. I think it’s what kept me going at that pace so steadily. In fact, from about 11km onward, I don’t recall being passed a single time. I just kept methodically picking off runners in front of me. Even so, things got tough around the 12 to 13km portion of the race. My form started to degrade, I was working harder to sustain the pace, and my heart rate inched toward the upper edge of my superthreshold zone. I resolved to keep this pace until at least the 16k mark and then re-evaluate how I was feeling about the final 5k dash.

Around 15km, which is when I planned to take my final gel, I felt some heartburn that must’ve been due to the gel. Not wanting to make things worse, I debated whether to skip the gel. Ultimately I took it; the heartburn didn’t go away but thankfully it didn’t get much worse either. Shortly thereafter we encountered a large hill just north of Rockcliffe. I’d run this hill twice during training and felt confident enough to press on at the current pace. I even passed a few runners in the process, which restored a bit of my mental focus. But the final 5k back toward Sussex and downtown Ottawa were cause to grit my teeth. The current pace was tolerable, but it felt like I couldn’t speed up due to some invisible mechanical blocker. It was like I’d hit a hard ceiling at 4 minutes per kilometre. So I steeled myself for a kick over the final bit of the race instead.

Near the 19 kilometre marker I glanced at my watch and noticed the time — up until then I’d only been looking at my overall pace, rolling km pace, and heart rate. It was at this moment that I really internalized that sub-1:35 was essentially guaranteed as long as I didn’t fall apart in the final ten minutes. I didn’t have much of a kick left for the final kilometre; I managed to shave a couple seconds off my pace but was unable to summon the reserves for a proper sprint finish. It didn’t help that there was an unusually steep hill right before the finish line. But I summited it nonetheless, crossing the finish line with a watch time of 1:32:12 and with 1:32:36 on the chip.

I felt generally fine after the race; my heart rate was back to normal levels within a minute or two, and there were no major pains to account for, aside from ankle soreness, a dull pain in my left toes, and a tight hip.⁴ After walking home, I checked the standings and was pleased to see that I’d finished 147th overall, putting me in the top 3% of finishers, and 27th in my age class.

Here are my splits for the entire race:

Kilometre	Split	Cumulative
5	23:59	23:59
10	22:52	46:51
15	20:41	1:07:32
20	20:21	1:27:53

Comparatively speaking, my first 5k was unusually slow. After double-checking the results, I realized that despite placing 147th, I had the slowest first 5k split of the top 295 finishers! My deeply negative split strategy worked as a psychological booster shot, but maybe I could have maintained the superthreshold pace for a couple kilometres if I’d started it sooner, or maybe I should’ve run the first 5k a bit more aggressively. If I’d even copied my second-split speed for those first 5k, I’d have been a minute and change shy of 90 minutes.

Even so, it felt great to complete a challenge that me from a year ago wouldn’t have even dreamed to try. And it was doubly great to beat my goal time by five minutes! I’ve signed up for the Ottawa Race Weekend half marathon in May 2026, and one thing I’ll be evaluating is a less lopsided split approach. We’ll see if it propels me below 1:30 and if the Norwegian singles approach can improve my top speed. Looking forward to the next round of training!

Footnotes

Turns out there was a 400m track just a couple kilometres from me, but I didn’t know about it until too late. It pays to Google things! ↩
Fun fact, iOS 26 now lets you create custom workouts on your iPhone, which is incredibly convenient if you want to do time- or distance-based subthreshold repeats. Unfortunately I didn’t discover this until launch day (no beta for me) so I was not actually able to benefit from it. There’s always next race though! ↩
I’ll have to re-evaluate this rule if I ever choose to do a marathon. ↩
I suspect my left foot is slightly larger than my right; maybe I ought to try half a shoe size up on the left foot? ↩